MTD Editor

[Mike.nl]

I took a break from working on my Alo Viewer to bring you a MTD Editor for editing the MT_COMMANDBAR files

 

It basically allows you to view the texture as a big archive of little textures, adding and modifying textures simply by selecting files.

 

You can get it at http://alpha1.dyndns.info/eaw/.

 

An important note for those who, up until now, modified the texture manually: it's not as simple as copy pasting into a free region. First of all you can't tell what areas are free by looking at the texture and second, the image has to be pasted into the texture in a special way (which is also explained on my site, under File Formats). At the risk of turning this post into a shameless ad, my editor is a safer way. It'll select a free region on its own, based upon usage in the MTD file, and it'll paste the file in the proper way.

 

I have to wonder how usefull this will be though, with the mod-tools supposedly mere days away.

 

Anyway, although I'm sure this is not as revolutionary as the Alo Viewer, I'd still love to hear feedback from the modding community.

[usul]

I was trying to use this so i created a 50x50 jpg file and added it to the main MTD. The picture file is also is data/art/textures, and the name in the MTD matches the name of ht efile PROVIDENCELITTLE.JPG, I can see the new icon in the TGA file when I view it in IrfanView. When I went to start up EAW everything worked fine until i got to the loading screen. All of the textures defined in the MTD were skew really oddly covering the screen in a grayish color, but some spots of the shell battle remained. I could still click on the side bar, but coul'net see anything through all the blur. When I quit and opened the MTD editor and opened the mtd, then the tga, then I got an error saying: "Bad or Corrupted File:" I've tried this referencing the new icon and xml and not referencing it. I also went back and changed the name of the ART folder, and everything worked, obviously without the new icons.

 

I also jsut tried saving the file without making any changes, and I get the same errors.

[Mike.nl]

That is strange. Several people have used it and no-one came across any problems. Try inserting a non-lossy image (e.g. PNG, GIF, TGA, etc) instead of JPG.

If that doesn't help, a screenshot of the menu and a copy of both MT_COMMANDBAR files would help me to analyze the problem.

 

On a different note:

DyNS, the provider through which my site's hostname's DNS is resolved, appears to be down for several days now. I have therefore created a new account at a different provider.

My site can now be found at: http://alpha1.dyndns.info/eaw/

[Mike.nl]

usul, thanks for the info. It helped me find the bug in no time.

Everyone should download the latest version (1.1) of the editor: http://alpha1.dyndns.info/eaw/

This fixes the bug where the editor saves corrupt files.

[usul]

Thank you for the new version, I'm getting my icons in game. This is more of a graphics question, but how do I make the backgrounds transparent, so it looks like the rest of the game's icons?

[itsonlymonday]

Thank you very much for your efforts Mike, this is very helpful. I'm looking forward to more of your work.

 

Thank you for the new version, I'm getting my icons in game. This is more of a graphics question, but how do I make the backgrounds transparent, so it looks like the rest of the game's icons?

Be sure to save an alpha layer to the targa file before you send it through the mtd editor. Here's a quick photoshop tutorial on this exact thing:

 

http://www.sluniverse.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10199

 

EDIT: I was really looking forward for a way to change the special ability icons, but I realized you couldn't really direct the game to display user-made ability icons.. Anyone have a workaround for this? Besides replacing the current in-game icons, of course.

[rogerbacon]

I was trying to open the Mt_commandBar.mtd and Mt_commandBar,tga from the "A Galaxy Divided mod V2.1" to add a sith apprentice but when I try to open Mt_commandBar.tga MTDEditor says "Bad or corrupt file". I am using version 1.1 of MTDEditor. The .mtd and .tga files seem to work fine in game so I doubt they are corrupt. Any ideas?

 

Roger Bacon

[Darth Khasei]

Roger are you the RB from CIV4? Anyway, I was think it may be that mod was for the versions prior to 1.4 patch and the MTD editor is for after the 1.4 patch.

 

If not, try using the one that came with the mod out of the original zip file. I know for a fact that after using the "map editor", my mtcommandbar.tga file "AWALYS" disappears out of the textures directory where it is stored. I think it may be messed up by the EAW program itself.

[rogerbacon]

Roger are you the RB from CIV4? Anyway, I was think it may be that mod was for the versions prior to 1.4 patch and the MTD editor is for after the 1.4 patch.

 

If not, try using the one that came with the mod out of the original zip file. I know for a fact that after using the "map editor", my mtcommandbar.tga file "AWALYS" disappears out of the textures directory where it is stored. I think it may be messed up by the EAW program itself.

 

Yeah, I'm the same RB as on the Civ4 forums. Empire at War is the only game that can pull me away from Civ these days.

Thanks for the advice. The mod I want to change added a lot of stuff already so I really don't want to go back and use the original one since I'd have to add all of his things in to it. I may do it eventually, but not right now.

 

Roger Bacon

[Slipstreme]

I just use GiFFY

[jedi7000nathan]

i can't get it to work

[Mike.nl]

I've just finished version 1.2 of the editor. Get it here:

http://alpha1.dyns.net/eaw/MTDEditor

 

This version includes some UI bugfixes and two 'major' changes:

• It now works completely with Unicode, so for all you people from weird places with weird path names, the editor can now handle them.
  Keep in mind that the files you insert should contain characters in the ASCII range only. The editor will convert any other characters to '_' when saving.
   
  
• It can now open corrupt files, but only in read-only mode. This allows you to recover the contents by extracting all files and inserting them into a new archive.
  

 

 

Also, I'm currently aware of two cases where version 1.1 showed a "Too many files selected" error when inserting a single file. Because I have been unable to reproduce the problem, I'm afraid the best I can say is: try and see if this version still has the problem.

If so, please post full details (at the very least the full path names) here.

 

Edit: I looked around on the internet and found a site that described this very bug in Windows. So following its suggestion, I fixed the problem.

I won't increase the version number though, seeing how this version only lived for like one hour.

So just download it again if you have 1.2 already.

[RazielKanos]

Hi Mike!

 

I really LOVE how you Editor is working, much easier to work with as i did before, but ... uhm - the result look a bit strange...

 

 

if you get what i mean. Just doanloaded the newest version. I used TGA files to import. When i opened the MTD file the editor told me it was in "read Only" mode because the mdt semed corrupt. It suggested to export everything and then to import again. I did that, an this is the result...

Well i can fix the alpha layer easily in photoshop, but if you have to fix the whole bar after you imported an icon you start to hate that work

[Slipstreme]

It is one rocking program my man With the assistance of my GiFFY to make small images transparent *snap* in under ten seconds I now have the PERFECT Icon inserter